


i put a spell on you

by void_fish



Category: Hockey RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/void_fish/pseuds/void_fish
Summary: When all’s said and done, Luc blames Sonny. Also Vegas, but mostly Sonny.





	i put a spell on you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aperfect20 (blamefincham)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamefincham/gifts).



> for lily! i hope this is as ridiculous and funny as you deserve

When all’s said and done, Luc blames Sonny. Also Vegas, but mostly Sonny.

‘Come _on_ , Luc, it’s _Vegas_ , we could be doing way weirder shit than we are.’

Luc fights back for a moment, but eventually lets Sonny take his elbow and drag him into the tiny store. It’s dark inside, lit by actual candles, and it kind of smells like weed and cheap perfume. Sonny makes a beeline for a bookcase, starts peering at the spines like he can understand whatever language they’re written in.

Luc stands by the doorway, but it’s fucking hot outside, and the store has AC at least, so he ventures a little further in. A cat winds its way around his ankles, meowing at him furiously when he bends down to pet her. He puts his hands up in surrender and she goes back to rubbing herself against his shin.

He glances around, looking for something that could be interesting, and comes literally eye to eye with a jar full of eyeballs. The little card on it says _Eye of Newt, 4/$1_. Luc squints at it.

‘Sonny?’ he asks. ‘Did you bring me to a magic store for a reason, or?’

‘I need stuff,’ Sonny says. He’s hauled a book off the shelf and is flipping through it, sunglasses balanced on top of his head.

‘Stuff,’ Luc repeats. He looks back at the newt eyes.

‘Stuff,’ Sonny repeats back to him. ‘I have needs, Dubois.’

‘Do you need dragon’s breath?’ Luc asks, picking up a small jar full of smoke. The label on the bottom says _$125_.

‘You break it, you buy it.’ Sonny says.

Luc puts the jar down very carefully.

He’s looking at small, ornate wooden boxes when he hears a voice behind him, and he jumps about a foot in the air. One of the boxes drops back to the table and cracks open. A puff of purple dust escapes.

Luc turns around, guilty. There’s a man standing behind him in a three piece suit, wearing old fashioned glasses and a bowler hat.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, bright red. ‘I’ll pay for it, how much--?’

The guy smiles. It’s not a pleasant smile. Luc glances around for Sonny, who’s still nose deep in another book.

‘Oh god, is it super expensive?’ Luc asks. ‘It’s fine, I can pay.’ He pulls his wallet out of his pocket.

‘I think you’ve already paid,’ the guy says. He has a weird accent, a little like Bob and Artemi, but not quite. When he smiles, Luc can see two rows of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth.

‘Uh, sorry?’

The guy quirks his eyebrow. His thin, pencil moustache twitches.

‘Normally, I would make a customer buy whatever he breaks, but I think for this particular breakage, the effects will be quite sufficient payment.’ He laughs, short and sinister.

‘Uh,’ Luc says again. ‘Are you sure I can’t just give you money?’

The guy smiles again, even wider. Luc feels the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up. ‘ _Quite_ sure,’ he says. ‘Please do enjoy your... purchase.’

He turns to walk back behind the counter, where he must have come from before.

‘Uh,’ Luc says again. ‘What exactly did I buy?’

The guy throws a look over his shoulder and keeps walking. ‘A love potion, my dear.’

‘A _what?_ ’ Luc asks, but the guy’s already gone.

Sonny appears by his side. ‘Shit, man,’ he says.

‘ _What_?’ Luc asks. He spins around again to look at the sad, broken box.

‘I only came in here for weed,’ he says. ‘I didn’t expect you to break shit and _get cursed_.’

‘ _Cursed_?’ Luc asks. ‘It’s a _love potion_ , that can’t be too bad, right?’

Sonny picks up the little card folded by the stack of boxes and starts reading.

‘ _Feeling lonely? Invisible? Just one pinch of our marvelous romance-enhancing power will have the next person you see begging to be with you. As soon as they look at you, they’ll be under your spell forever_.'

‘Shit,’ Luc says. ‘That can’t be real, right? Love potions aren’t real.’

‘I dunno, man,’ Sonny says. He looks very serious, which is both unlike him and incredibly alarming. ‘He seemed pretty serious. Why else wouldn’t he make you pay for it?’

‘Don’t look at me, then,’ Luc says, immediately. ‘Put your sunglasses on, maybe that’ll stop it working.’

Sonny flips his sunglasses down, no doubt making it even harder for him to see in an already dark store, but Luc immediately feels a little better.

‘We should go,’ Luc says.

‘But I didn’t even get my weed,’ Sonny complains, but Luc is already gone.

Luckily, it’s sunny enough in Vegas that everyone they see is wearing sunglasses. Luc spends the first twenty minutes of their walk listening to Sonny grumble about having to spend the night sober.

‘Should you even be getting high while you’re on team prescribed painkillers?’ Luc asks, and Sonny waves a hand at him, but by that point they’re already at the arena, handing their IDs over to security.

Luc’s almost forgotten about trying to avoid anyone looking at him when he hears footsteps behind him, and before he can do anything, Dubi has him in a friendly headlock, knocking his sunglasses off his head and making a mess of his hair.

‘ _Why?_ ’ Luc asks, squirming and trying to wriggle free.

Dubi eventually lets him go, grinning like the smug asshole that he is. ‘It’s fun.’

Luc makes eye contact with him, and realises Dubi’s not wearing sunglasses. His smirk has turned a little softer. His eyes look big and warm, and he’s looking at Luc fondly.

‘Oh no,’ Luc says.

Dubi’s smile fades a little, turns to mild confusion. He tilts his head. ‘What?’ he asks, but Luc’s already gone.

‘I’ll explain later,’ he calls down the hallway, ducking into a random room and shutting the door behind him.

-

Luc stays in what turns out to be a janitor supply closet for-- well, a while.

He googles ‘love potion’ on his phone, finds a bunch of ad links, the wikipedia page, the _Harry Potter_ wikipedia page, and a bunch of sites giving him the dictionary definition.  

He tries ‘love potion vegas’ and gets an article for a cocktail bar somewhere in Vegas offering drinks called Love Potions. After that he gives up, and tries to reason with himself.

Love potions aren’t real. If they were, Google would have told him something, right? And there’s no way that Dubi was the first person to look at him, so even if they _are,_ Dubi can’t be in love with him.

_Right?_

Eventually, his phone buzzes with a text from Sonny, a series of emojis that amount to _are you coming to practice already???_.

Luc closes all his tabs and texts back a thumbs up emoji.

-

Luc had big plans to keep his head down and avoid Dubi in the locker room, which would have worked perfectly if not for two very important things:

  1. He sits next to Dubi in said locker room, and
  2. Dubi is _Brandon Dubinsky_ , incapable of leaving anyone or anything alone.



‘Hey, mini me,’ Dubi says, jabbing him in the elbow. ‘Is that a phone in your pocket, or are you just really pleased to see me?’

Luc flushes and glances down, and his phone is in fact stuck in his pocket at an angle that kind of makes it look like it could be his dick.

‘Are you twelve?’ Fligs asks from behind Luc. ‘Leave the kid alone, Dub.’

‘But he clearly wants to be bothered,’ Dubi argues. ‘Look at that face. Is that a face made for fucking with or what?’

Behind him, Fligs snorts.

Luc glances back up and Dubi is giving him a surprisingly genuine smile. Luc smiles back, cautious, and gets a wink from Dubi, right before he facewashes him with a gross glove.

Luc sputters and recoils. ‘How is your glove so gross? You just put it on!’

‘Some stink doesn’t come off,’ Dubi says, gleeful, and takes off for the ice. Luc hasn’t even taken his shirt off yet, and by the time he gets out there, he gets about two steps onto the ice before Torts is blowing his whistle. Dubi glides to a stop next to him in the scrum and whacks at his skate with a stick lightly, making him stumble.

Thankfully, once practice gets underway, Dubi mostly leaves him alone. He hasn’t been back on the ice long, and he’s still trying to get back into a rhythm, Luc thinks. The more time he spends skating, the less time he spends fucking with Luc.

He still watches him though, Luc notices. He’ll finish a drill, skate back to the red line, and he’ll meet Dubi’s eyes.

‘Are you watching me skate?’ Luc asks, near the end of practice.

‘Always,’ Dubi says, winks at him again, but before Luc can ask why, the whistle goes again, and they have to do sprints.

By the time they’re done skating, Luc is breathing too hard to ask anyone anything.

He’s still sucking air when he drops into his locker stall, bends over to heave in breaths, elbows on his knees. Dubi drops into the stall next to him, annoyingly not short of breath.

‘Hurry up and get changed,’ he says. ‘I’ll buy you lunch.’

‘Why?’ Luc asks, suspicious.

‘Fliggy said I was being a dick earlier. Also all the time. Consider it an apology. I’ll even buy you a beer.’

Luc looks up at him, trying to figure out how genuine he’s being. He’s smiling at Luc. Not smirking, or anything like that, but an actual smile. He has a nice smile, Luc realises, and then has to give himself a mental talking-to.

‘Sure,’ Luc says. ‘Thanks.’

‘Awesome,’ Dubi says, and pulls his jersey off, throwing it on the pile in the middle of the room. ‘It’s a date.’

-

Luc beats Dubi to the shower, making a run for it while he’s distracted talking to Calvy about football. By the time he’s done, Dubi’s got lather in his hair and Luc escapes unscathed, no red towel marks at all.

He’s fully dressed and dicking around on his phone when Dubi nudges him. ‘Ready to go?’

‘Uh, sure,’ Luc says, colouring a little.

‘Be good, kids,’ Fligs says, as Dubi holds the door open for Luc.

‘I’m always good,’ Dubi calls over his shoulder, and the door swings shut. He turns his attention to Luc. ‘So, where are we going?’

-

They end up at a brunch place called Bruxie, because it was at the top of the Yelp search page when Luc googled ‘restaurants near t-mobile arena’.

Luc gets a mushroom and chicken salad, and Dubi gets something called “Green Eggs and Ham” out of curiosity more than anything.

‘Enjoying Vegas?’ Dubi asks, while they’re waiting for their food.

‘I’d like it more if I didn’t get carded everywhere I went,’ Luc admits, making Dubi laugh.

Dubi’s foot is just barely hooked around Luc’s ankle. He probably thinks it’s the table, Luc figures.

‘Beyond that, it’s a lot of fun,’ Luc says. ‘Nice weather.’

Dubi hums and nods his head.

‘How about the team?’ he asks, after the waiter drops off their drinks. (No beer, Dubi decided in the end.)

‘They’re good,’ Luc says. ‘It’s-- everyone’s great.’

‘Even me, huh?’ Dubi asks, smirking a little. He steals the lemon that Luc had just fished out of his drink and left on the side of his napkin, and drops it in his own drink.

Luc wobbles his hand, pulling a face, and Dubi laughs, tipping his head back.

The food arrives, and the conversation falls into easy topics; Dubi asks about what home is like for Luc, and tells stories about growing up in Alaska.

(Luc’s pretty sure they’re almost all bullshit, but he doesn’t call him on it because they’re fucking _hilarious_ and he’s too busy laughing.)

‘I should have done this sooner,’ Dubi says, chasing the last piece of ham around the plate.

Luc frowns, tilts his head.

‘Gotten to know you properly,’ Dubi clarifies. ‘You’re pretty great, kid.’

‘--Thanks?’ Luc says, surprised. He doesn’t mean it to be a question, but his voice goes up at the end anyway.

Dubi kicks him gently. ‘We should do this again. Dubi and Dubi lunches. It was fun.’

‘--Yeah,’ Luc says, a beat too late.

Dubi frowns. He looks a little _sad,_ Luc realises with vague horror, before Dubi chases it away with nonchalance.

‘We don’t have to,’ he says. ‘I just thought--’ He trails off.

‘No, no,’ Luc rushes. ‘I want to too.’ He pauses. ‘Just-- why now, all of a sudden?’

Dubi looks surprised, and then shrugs. ‘I just saw you coming into the arena today, and thought I should get to know you. That’s all.’ He smiles, wonky. ‘Turns out it was one of my better ideas.’

Luc takes a breath, feels the vaguely bad feeling settle into the pit of his stomach. Fuck.

Love potions _aren’t real_. But if they were, he may have accidentally cursed Dubi into being in love with him.

-

It takes Luc a while to find the store again.

He doesn’t ask Sonny, because he’s having an appointment with the team physio, and honestly Luc can’t wait the half hour it’ll take for him to be done with that. Besides, he’s already out, tells Dubi he’s souvenir shopping for his sister, and escapes into the crowds.

He tries not to think about how he can feel Dubi’s eyes on him until he disappears around a corner.

Eventually though, he winds up back on the block the store was on, and ducks inside, sheepish.

There’s a girl at the counter, tall and beautiful in a terrifying sort of way, with lots of piercings and a tattoo of a peacock on her chest.

‘Uh,’ Luc says, when she eyes him with a bored expression. ‘I was here earlier?’

‘Uh huh,’ she says, gives him a pretty blatant up and down once over.

‘I-- broke something?’ he continues.

She blows a bubble with her gum. Luc feels like he’s in an eighties movie. ‘Uh huh,’ she says.

‘The guy that works here told me it was a love potion?’ he tries. ‘I need to reverse it?’

‘What’d he look like?’ she asks.

‘Uh, he was older, wearing a suit, and a bowler hat, and those little glasses without the ear bits,’ he says.

She arches an eyebrow at him. ‘That’s not really the aesthetic of this place,’ she says.

‘I just want to fix what happened,’ he says. ‘I-- I think my coworker is in love with me.’

‘Can’t help you,’ she says, and goes back to her magazine, flipping a page over decisively.

Luc stands there, useless, for a few moments, until she flips another page, and he leaves, defeated.

-

 _you have to help me_ , he texts Sonny, as soon as he’s back outside.

He gets a face with sunglasses, a thumbs up, and a question mark in return.

_the love potion WORKED and i have to figure out how to fix it_

Another question mark, then two boys holding hands, and two different heart emojis.

 _meet me at the hotel?_ he asks.

A little running emoji. Luc relaxes a little bit, and heads for the hotel.

-

He has to hide in the ladies room (thankfully empty) to avoid Dubi in the hotel lobby, and manages to sneak past him into the stairwell while he chats to Andy about-- something? Luc isn’t really listening, just makes wide eyes at Andy, who thankfully seems to understand, and angles Dubi away from Luc.

Sonny’s in their room already when he gets there, snacking on a brownie that Luc really, _really_ hopes is just a brownie.

‘So, what’s your problem, my dude?’ Sonny asks, pushing his hair out of his face.

‘Dubi’s in _love_ with me,’ Luc says.

‘Huh,’ Sonny says. ‘Awkward.’

‘Yeah,’ Luc agrees. ‘So I have to--’

‘On account of that huge crush you have on him,’ Sonny continues, like Luc hasn’t even spoken.

‘I don’t have a _crush_ on _Dubi_ ,’ Luc says, turning bright red.

‘Sure,’ Sonny says, taking another bite of brownie.

‘This is not helpful,’ Luc says, and Sonny shrugs. ‘How do I break a love potion?’

Another shrug. ‘Wait for it to wear off?’

‘When will _that_ be?’ Luc demands.

‘Dunno,’ Sonny says. ‘Have you googled it?’

‘Shockingly, googling ‘how long a love potion takes to wear off’ doesn’t give me a lot of useful results.’

‘Maybe you should tell Dubi about it. Then it might break the spell or whatever.’

‘ _How_ would that break the spell?’

‘Dunno,’ Sonny says again. ‘I think I saw it on an episode of Charmed. Like, if you tell the person about the spell, it stops working.’

It-- actually might be the best idea they’ve collectively had so far.

Luc sighs.

‘You want some of my brownie?’ Sonny offers, holding it out. ‘It might make you feel better.’

Luc eyes it carefully, before breaking off a chunk. Sonny beams, and shoves the rest of it in his mouth.

(It is not _just_ a brownie. Luc needs to stop trusting Sonny with baked goods. He means it this time.)

-

 _lunch tomorrow_? Luc texts Dubi, once the mild high has worn off. _my turn_

 _does that mean i get to pick the place?_ Dubi sends back, almost immediately.

Luc pauses. _yeah, okay_ , he says, and gets a smiley face in return. Like, an old fashioned smiley face, made of a colon and a bracket, not an emoji. Luc is not endeared. He’s _not_.

-

‘So, I have a confession to make,’ Luc says. He waited for Dubi to take a disgustingly big bite of his sandwich, and can’t say anything in return, so Dubi just frowns at him, cheeks puffed out like a hamster.

‘Sonny and I went to a magic store yesterday morning, and I was looking at these weird little boxes, and I broke one and got all this purple stuff on my hands, and some guy told me it was a love potion and that the next person that looked at me would fall in love with me and--’ he falters a little, as Dubi swallows his mouthful of sandwich. ‘And you were the next person that looked at me,’ he finishes, turning red.

Dubi doesn’t say anything for an agonisingly long time. He wipes a smear of ranch off the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

‘Uh,’ he says. Luc is staring very hard at his own sandwich. He tugs at a sliver of onion with his fingernails. ‘Luc. Kid. Look at me.’

Luc looks up. Dubi is looking at him, a little concerned. ‘You know that magic isn’t real, right?’ he asks, gentle. ‘Like, you didn’t put a spell on me or anything.’

‘But--’ Luc says. Dubi tilts his head, waits. ‘You were _flirting_ with me yesterday. You were playing _footsie_.’

Dubi turns a little pink, coughs quietly. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I guess I was.’

‘So-- it _must_ be the love spell,’ Luc says, triumphant. ‘It’s okay though, I can fix it, I promise.’

Dubi’s face falls, his eyes get kind of big and a little bit sad. Luc frowns. ‘Don’t you want me to fix it?’ he asks. ‘I made you fall in love with me, that’s not fair.’

Dubi looks like he’s going to say something, and then shakes his head a little. ‘Where did you get this spell?’

‘It’s-- a couple of blocks from here,’ Luc says. ‘Sonny wanted to go there, and I was just kind of looking around, I didn’t _mean_ to break anything.’

‘Let’s go see this guy,’ Dubi says. ‘Maybe he--’ he clears his throat a little. ‘Maybe he knows more.’

-

Dubi is silent the whole walk there. Luc leads him quietly, head ducked.

Dubi makes a sound when they enter the store, like he’s trying to bite back a laugh.

‘I know how it looks,’ Luc says, a little snappier than he means to. It’s a different girl behind the counter, young and blonde and friendly.

‘Uh,’ Luc says. ‘Does a guy work here who wears a suit and bowler hat? Weird accent?’

She laughs. ‘Richard’s been winding you up, huh?’ She has the same accent as the guy, almost Russian but not quite. She turns over her shoulder to a door Luc hasn’t spotted before, and yells something in another language.

Richard pokes his head out. It’s the same guy, in a different suit, but instead of the bowler hat and the old fashioned glasses, he’s wearing a more modern pair of glasses, and his head is clean shaven. He’s grinning, and says something back, before the girl rolls her eyes, and gestures at Luc.

‘Magic’s not real, kid,’ he says, and Luc suddenly feels his cheeks heat.

‘But--’ he says. ‘This whole place--’

‘Mostly a tourist trap,’ Richard says. ‘The newt eyes are gummy candies. You broke a box filled with sand we dye purple.’

‘--Oh,’ Luc says. He doesn’t really know what else to say.

‘Good job,’ Dubi says, sounding-- angry. ‘Maybe don’t prey on teenagers next time.’

Richard shrugs, still smiling. ‘It was all in jest,’ he says.

Dubi grabs Luc by the elbow. ‘Come on, Luc,’ he says, and tugs him towards the door. ‘Let’s go.’

Luc lets himself be pulled. He’s vaguely wishing for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

Dubi keeps hold of him when they get outside, muttering darkly about asshole conmen and fuckin’ Vegas and--

‘Why did you flirt with me?’ Luc asks, and then snaps his mouth shut. He can feel his face flaming, and Dubi’s hand is heavy on his elbow. They stop walking, and someone barges past Luc’s shoulder, knocking him into Dubi.

They go to the side of the street, standing under an awning, out of the foot traffic.

Dubi is quiet. When Luc sneaks a look at him, he looks like he’s thinking. He’s _still_ holding onto Luc’s elbow.

‘You really can’t think of a reason someone would be flirting with you?’ Dubi asks, eventually.

Luc frowns, and shakes his head.

Dubi mutters something that Luc doesn’t quite hear, and then says, ‘Thank god you’re pretty, kid.’

‘--What?’ Luc asks, and then doesn’t really say much of anything, because Dubi is kissing him, surprisingly gentle, a sharp contrast to his fingers digging into Luc’s arm.

‘-- _What_?’ he says, when Dubi pulls away, giving him that same wonky smile as before.

‘It’s not a spell,’ Dubi says. ‘Just a good, old fashioned crush.’

Luc blinks at him, wide eyed. Dubi laughs, takes a quick look around to make sure no one’s paying attention, and kisses him again, grip sliding from elbow to wrist, tender.


End file.
